Obama's Second Latin American Coup

The recent coup against Paraguay's
democratically elected president is not only a blow to democracy, but an attack
against the working and poor population that supported and elected President
Fernando Lugo, whom they see as a bulwark against the wealthy elite who've dominated the country for decades.

The U.S. mainstream media and politicians are
not calling the events in Paraguay a coup, since the president is being
"legally impeached" by the elite-dominated Paraguayan
Congress. But as economist Mark Weisbrot explains in the Guardian :

"The Congress of Paraguay is trying to oust
the president, Fernando Lugo, by means of an impeachment proceeding for which
he was given less than 24 hours to prepare and only two hours to present a
defense. It appears that a decision to convict him has already been
written...The main trigger for the impeachment is an armed clash between
peasants fighting for land rights with police...But this violent confrontation
is merely a pretext, as it is clear that the president had no responsibility
for what happened. Nor have Lugo's opponents presented any evidence for their
charges in today's "trial.' President Lugo proposed an investigation into the
incident; the opposition was not interested, preferring their rigged judicial
proceedings."

What was the real reason the right-wing
Paraguay Senate wanted to expel their democratically elected president? Another
article by the Guardian makes this clear:

"The president was also tried on four other
charges: that he improperly allowed leftist parties to hold a political meeting
in an army base in 2009; that he allowed about 3,000 squatters [landless peasants] to illegally
invade a large Brazilian-owned soybean farm; that his government failed to
capture members of a [leftist] guerrilla group, the Paraguayan People's Army...
and that he signed an international [leftist] protocol without properly
submitting it to congress for approval."

The article adds that the president's former
political allies were "...upset after he gave a majority of cabinet
ministry posts to leftist allies, and handed a minority to the moderates...The
political split had become sharply clear as Lugo publicly acknowledged recently
that he would support leftist candidates in future elections."

It's obvious that the President's real crimes
are that he chose to ally himself more closely with Paraguay's left, which in
reality means the working and poor masses of the country, who, like other Latin
American countries, choose socialism as their form of political
expression.

Although Paraguay's elite lost control of the
presidency when Lugo was elected, they used their stranglehold over the Senate
to reverse the gains made by Paraguay's poor. This is similar to the
situation in Egypt: when the old regime of the wealthy elite lost their
president/dictator, they used their control of the judiciary in an attempt to
reverse the gains of the revolution.

Is it fair to blame the Obama administration for
the recent coup in Paraguay? Yes, but it takes an introductory lesson on
U.S. - Latin American relations to understand why. Paraguay's right wing -
a tiny wealthy elite - has a long-standing relationship with the United States,
which has backed dictatorships for decades in the country - a common pattern in
most Latin American countries.

The United States promotes the interests of the
wealthy of these mostly-poor countries, and in turn, these elite-run countries
are obedient to the pro-corporate foreign policy of the United States (The Open
Veins of Latin America is an excellent book that outlines the history).

Paraguay's elite is incapable of acting so
boldly without first consulting the United States, since neighboring countries
are overwhelmingly hostile to such an act because they fear a U.S.-backed coup
in their own countries.

Paraguay's elite has only the military for
internal support, which for decades has been funded and trained by the United
States. President Lugo did not fully sever the U.S. military's
links to his country. According to Wikipedia, "The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) provides
technical assistance and training to help modernize and professionalize the
[Paraguay]military..."

In short, it is not remotely possible for
Paraguay's elite to act without assurance from the United States that it
would continue to receive U.S. political and financial support; the elite now
needs a steady flow of guns and tanks to defend itself from the poor of
Paraguay.

The Latin American countries surrounding
Paraguay denounced the events as they unfolded and made an emergency trip to
the country in an attempt to stop them. What was the Obama
administration's response? Business Week explains :

"As Paraguay's Senate conducted the
impeachment trial, the U.S. State Department had said that it was watching the
situation closely."

"We understand that Paraguay's Senate has voted
to impeach President Lugo," said Darla Jordan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State
Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs..."We urge all Paraguayans to
act peacefully, with calm and responsibility, in the spirit of Paraguay's
democratic principles."

Obama might as well have said: "We support
the right-wing coup against the elected president of Paraguay." Watching a
crime against democracy happen - even if it is "watched closely" -
and failing to denounce it makes one complicit in the act. The State
Department's carefully crafted words are meant to give implicit support to the
new illegal regime in Paraguay.

Obama acted as he did because Lugo turned left,
away from corporate interests, towards Paraguay's poor. Lugo had also more
closely aligned himself with regional governments which had worked towards
economic independence from the United States. Most importantly perhaps is
that, in 2009, President Lugo forbid the building of a planned U.S. military
base in Paraguay.

What was the response of Paraguay's working and
poor people to their new dictatorship? They amassed outside of the
Congress and were attacked by riot police and water cannons. It is
unlikely that they will sit on their hands during this episode, since President
Lugo had raised their hopes of having a more humane existence.

President Lugo has unfortunately given his
opponents an advantage by accepting the rulings that he himself called a coup,
allowing himself to be replaced by a Senate-appointed president. But
Paraguay's working and poor people will act with more boldness, in line with
the social movements across Latin America that have struck heavy blows against
the power of their wealthy elite.

President Obama's devious actions
towards Paraguay reaffirm which side of the wealth divide he stands on. His
first coup in Honduras sparked the outrage of the entire hemisphere; this one
will confirm to Latin Americans that neither Republicans nor Democrats care
anything about democracy.